We can now return to the central question of this book: What is life? My thesis has been that a theory of living systems consistent with the philosophical framework of deep ecology, including an appropriate mathematical language and implying a nonmechanis- tic, post-Cartesian understanding of life, is now emerging.
Pattern and Structure
The emergence and refinement of the concept of “pattern of organization” has been a crucial element in the development of this new way of thinking. From Pythagoras to Aristotle, to Goethe, and to the organismic biologists, there is a continuous intellectual tradition that struggles with the understanding of pattern, realizing that it is crucial to the understanding of living form. Alexander Bogdanov was the first to attempt the integration of the concepts of organization, pattern, and complexity into a coherent systems theory. The cyberneticists focused on patterns of communication and control—in particular on the patterns of circular causality underlying the feedback concept—and in doing so were the first to clearly distinguish the pattern of organization of a system from its physical structure.
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The missing “pieces of the puzzle” were identified and analyzed over the past twenty years—the concept of self-organization and the new mathematics of complexity. Again the notion of pattern has been central to both of these developments. The concept of self-organization originated in the recognition of the network as the general pattern of life, which was subsequently refined by Maturana and Varela in their concept of autopoiesis. The new mathematics of complexity is essentially a mathematics of visual patterns—strange attractors, phase portraits, fractals, and so on— which are analyzed within the framework of topology pioneered by Poincare.
The understanding of pattern, then, will be of crucial importance to the scientific understanding of life. However, for a full understanding of a living system, the understanding of its pattern of organization, although critically important, is not enough. We also need to understand the system’s structure. Indeed, we have seen that the study of structure has been the principal approach in Western science and philosophy and as such has again and again eclipsed the study of pattern.
I have come to believe that the key to a comprehensive theory of living systems lies in the synthesis of those two approaches—the study of pattern (or form, order, quality) and the study of structure (or substance, matter, quantity). I shall follow Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in their definitions of those two key criteria of a living system—its pattern of organization and its structure. 1 The pattern of organization of any system, living or nonliving, is the configuration of relationships among the system’s components that determines the system’s essential characteristics. In other words, certain relationships must be present for something to be recognized as—say—a chair, a bicycle, or a tree. That configuration of relationships that gives a system its essential characteristics is what we mean by its pattern of organization.
The structure of a system is the physical embodiment of its pattern of organization. Whereas the description of the pattern of organization involves an abstract mapping of relationships, the description of the structure involves describing the system’s actual
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physical components—their shapes, chemical compositions, and so forth.
To illustrate the difference between pattern and structure, let us look at a well-known nonliving system, a bicycle. In order for something to be called a bicycle, there must be a number of functional relationships among components known as frame, pedals, handlebars, wheels, chain, sprocket, and so on. The complete configuration of these functional relationships constitutes the bicycle’s pattern of organization. All of those relationships must be present to give the system the essential characteristics of a bicycle.
The structure of the bicycle is the physical embodiment of its pattern of organization in terms of components of specific shapes, made of specific materials. The same pattern “bicycle” can be embodied in many different structures. The handlebars will be shaped differently for a touring bike, a racing bike, or a mountain bike; the frame may be heavy and solid or light and delicate; the tires may be narrow or wide, tubes or solid rubber. All these combinations and many more will easily be recognized as different embodiments of the same pattern of relationships that defines a bicycle.
The Three Key Criteria
In a machine such as a bicycle the parts have been designed, manufactured, and then put together to form a structure with fixed components. In a living system, by contrast, the components change continually. There is a ceaseless flux of matter through a living organism. Each cell continually synthesizes and dissolves structures and eliminates waste products. Tissues and organs replace their cells in continual cycles. There is growth, development, and evolution. Thus from the very beginning of biology, the understanding of living structure has been inseparable from the understanding of metabolic and developmental processes. 2
This striking property of living systems suggests process as a third criterion for a comprehensive description of the nature of life. The process of life is the activity involved in the continual embodiment of the system’s pattern of organization. Thus the
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process criterion is the link between pattern and structure. In the case of the bicycle, the pattern of organization is represented by the design sketches that are used to build the bicycle, the structure is a specific physical bicycle, and the link between pattern and structure is in the mind of the designer. In the case of a living organism, however, the pattern of organization is always embodied in the organism’s structure, and the link between pattern and structure lies in the process of continual embodiment.
The process criterion completes the conceptual framework of my synthesis of the emerging theory of living systems. The definitions of the three criteria—pattern, structure, and process—are listed once more in the table that follows. All three criteria are totally interdependent. The pattern of organization can be recognized only if it is embodied in a physical structure, and in living systems this embodiment is an ongoing process. Thus structure and process are inextricably linked. One could say that the three criteria—pattern, structure, and process—are three different but inseparable perspectives on the phenomenon of life. They will form the three conceptual dimensions of my synthesis.
To understand the nature of life from a systemic point of view means to identify a set of general criteria by which we can make a clear distinction between living and nonliving systems. Throughout the history of biology many criteria have been suggested, but all of them turned out to be flawed in one way or another. However, the recent formulations of models of self-organization and the mathematics of complexity indicate that it is now possible to identify such criteria. The key idea of my synthesis is to express those criteria in terms of the three conceptual dimensions, pattern, structure, and process.
In a nutshell, I propose to understand autopoiesis, as defined by Maturana and Varela, as the pattern of life (that is, the pattern of organization of living systems); 3 dissipative structure, as defined by Prigogine, as the structure of living systems; 4 and cognition, as defined initially by Gregory Bateson and more fully by Maturana and Varela, as the process of life.
The pattern of organization determines a system’s essential characteristics. In particular it determines whether the system is
the configuration of relationships that determines the system’s
essential characteristics
the physical embodiment of the system’s pattern of organization
the activity involved in the continual embodiment of the system’s
pattern of organization
living or nonliving. Autopoiesis—the pattern of organization of living systems—is thus the defining characteristic of life in the new theory. To find out whether a particular system—a crystal, a virus, a cell, or the planet Earth—is alive, all we need to do is find out whether its pattern of organization is that of an autopoietic network. If it is, we are dealing with a living system; if it is not, the system is nonliving.
Cognition, the process of life, is inextricably linked to autopoiesis, as we shall see. Autopoiesis and cognition are two different aspects of the same phenomenon of life. In the new theory all living systems are cognitive systems, and cognition always implies the existence of an autopoietic network.
With the third criterion of life, the structure of living systems, the situation is slightly different. Although the structure of a living system is always a dissipative structure, not all dissipative structures are autopoietic networks. Thus a dissipative structure may be a living or a nonliving system. For example, the Benard cells and chemical clocks studied extensively by Pngogine are dissipative structures but not living systems. 5
The three key criteria of life and the theories underlying them will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. At this point I merely want to give a brief overview.
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Autopoiesis—the Pattern of Life
Since the early part of the century it has been known that the pattern of organization of a living system is always a network pattern. 6 However, we also know that not all networks are living systems. According to Maturana and Varela, the key characteristic of a living network is that it continually produces itself. Thus “the being and doing of [living systems] are inseparable, and this is their specific mode of organization.” 7 Autopoiesis, or “self-making,” is a network pattern in which the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network. In this way the network continually makes itself. It is produced by its components and in turn produces those components.
The simplest living system we know is a cell, and Maturana and Varela have used cell biology extensively to explore the details of autopoietic networks. The basic pattern of autopoiesis can be illustrated conveniently with a plant cell. Figure 7-1 shows a simplified picture of such a cell, in which the components have been given descriptive English names. The corresponding technical terms, derived from Greek and Latin, are listed in the glossary that follows.
Like every other cell, a typical plant cell consists of a cell membrane which encloses the cell fluid. The fluid is a rich molecular soup of cell nutrients—that is, of the chemical elements out of which the cell builds its structures. Suspended in the cell fluid we find the cell nucleus, a large number of tiny production centers where the main structural building blocks are produced, and several specialized parts, called “organelles,” which are analogous to body organs. The most important of these organelles are the storage sacs, recycling centers, powerhouses, and solar stations. Like the cell as a whole, the nucleus and the organelles are surrounded by semipermeable membranes that select what comes in and what goes out. The cell membrane, in particular, takes in food and dissipates waste.
The cell nucleus contains the genetic material—the DNA mole-
Figure 7-1
Basic components of a plant cell.
cules carrying the genetic information, and the RNA molecules, which are made by the DNA to deliver instructions to the production centers. 8 The nucleus also contains a smaller “mininucleus,” where the production centers are made before being distributed throughout the cell.
The production centers are granular bodies in which the cell’s proteins are produced. These include structural proteins as well as the enzymes, the catalysts that promote all cellular processes. There are about five hundred thousand production centers in each cell.
The storage sacs are stacks of flat pouches, somewhat like a pile
Glossary of Technical Terms
cell fluid: cytoplasm (“cell fluid”) mininucleus: nucleolus (“small nucleus”)
production center: ribosome; composite of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and microsome (“microscopic body”), denoting a tiny granule containing RNA
storage sac: Golgi apparatus (named after the Italian physician Camillo Golgi)
recycling center: lysosome (“dissolving body”) powerhouse: mitochondrion (“threadlike granule”) energy carrier: adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a chemical
compound consisting of a base, a sugar, and three phosphates solar station: chloroplast (“green leaf”)
of pita bread, where various cellular products are stored and then labeled, packaged, and sent on to their destinations.
The recycling centers are organelles containing enzymes for digesting food, damaged cell components, and various unused molecules. The broken-down elements are then recycled and used for building new cell components.
The powerhouses carry out the cellular respiration—in other words, they use oxygen to break down organic molecules into carbon dioxide and water. This releases energy that is locked up in special energy carriers. These energy carriers are complex molecular compounds that travel to the other parts of the cell to supply energy for all cellular processes, known collectively as “cell metabolism.” The energy carriers serve as the cell’s main energy units, not unlike cash in the human economy.
It was discovered only recently that the powerhouses contain their own genetic material and replicate independently of the replication of the cell. According to a theory by Lynn Margulis, they evolved from simple bacteria that came to live in the complex larger cells about two billion years ago. 9 Since then they have been permanent residents in all higher organisms, passed on from generation to generation and living in intimate symbiosis with each cell.
Like the powerhouses, the solar stations contain their own genetic material and self-reproduce, but they are found only in green plants. They are the centers for photosynthesis, transforming solar energy, carbon dioxide, and water into sugars and oxygen. The sugars then travel to the powerhouses, where their energy is extracted and stored in energy carriers. To supplement the sugars, plants also absorb nutrients and trace elements from the earth through their roots.
Figure 7-2
Metabolic processes in a plant cell.
We see that in order to give even a rough idea of cellular organization, the description of the cell’s components has to be quite elaborate; and the complexity increases dramatically when
we try to picture how these cell components are interlinked in a vast network, involving thousands of metabolic processes. The enzymes alone form an intricate network of catalytic reactions, promoting all metabolic processes, and the energy carriers form a corresponding energy network to fuel them. Figure 7-2 shows another drawing of our simplified plant cell, this time with various arrows indicating some of the links in the network of metabolic processes.
Components of the autopoietic network involved in the repair of DNA.
To illustrate the nature of this network, let us look at just one single loop. The DNA in the cell nucleus produces RNA molecules, which contain instructions for the production of proteins, including enzymes. Among these is a group of special enzymes
that can recognize, remove, and replace damaged sections of DNA. 10 Figure 7-3 is a schematic drawing of some of the relationships involved in this loop. The DNA produces RNA, which delivers instructions to the production centers for producing the enzymes, which enter the cell nucleus to repair the DNA. Each component in this partial network helps to produce or transform other components; thus the network is clearly autopoietic. The DNA produces the RNA; the RNA specifies the enzymes; and the enzymes repair the DNA.
To complete the picture, we would have to add the building blocks from which DNA, RNA, and enzymes are made; the en- ergy carriers fueling each of the processes pictured; the generation of the energy in the powerhouses from broken-down sugars; the production of the sugars by photosynthesis in the solar stations; and so on. With each addition to the network we would see that the new components, too, help to produce and transform other components, and thus the autopoietic, self-making nature of the entire network would become ever more apparent.
The case of the cell membrane is especially interesting. It is a boundary of the cell, formed by some of the cell’s components, which encloses the network of metabolic processes and thus limits their extension. At the same time, the membrane participates in the network by selecting the raw material for the production processes (the cell’s food) through special filters and by dissipating waste into the outside environment. Thus the autopoietic network creates its own boundary, which defines the cell as a distinct system while being an active part of the network.
Since all components of an autopoietic network are produced by other components in the network, the entire system is organizationally closed, even though it is open with regard to the flow of energy and matter. This organizational closure implies that a living system is self-organizing in the sense that its order and behavior are not imposed by the environment but are established by the system itself. In other words, living systems are autonomous. This does not mean that they are isolated from their environment. On the contrary, they interact with the environment through a continual exchange of energy and matter. But this interaction does not
determine their organization—-they are self- organizing. Autopoiesis, then, is seen as the pattern underlying the phenomenon of self-organization, or autonomy, that is so characteristic of all living systems.
Through their interactions with the environment living organisms continually maintain and renew themselves, using energy and resources from the environment for that purpose. Moreover, the continual self-making also includes the ability to form new structures and new patterns of behavior. We shall see that this creation of novelty, resulting in development and evolution, is an intrinsic aspect of autopoiesis.
A subtle but important point in the definition of autopoiesis is the fact that an autopoietic network is not a set of relations among static components (like, for example, the pattern of organization of a crystal), but a set of relations among processes of production of components. If these processes stop, so does the entire organization. In other words, autopoietic networks must continually regenerate themselves to maintain their organization. This, of course, is a well-known characteristic of life.
Maturana and Varela see the difference between relationships among static components and relationships among processes as a key distinction between physical and biological phenomena. Since the processes in a biological phenomenon involve components, it is always possible to abstract from them a description of those components in purely physical terms. However, the authors argue that such a purely physical description will not capture the biological phenomenon. A biological explanation, they maintain, must be one in terms of relationships of processes within the context of autopoiesis.
Dissipative Structure—the Structure of Living Systems
When Maturana and Varela describe the pattern of life as an autopoietic network, their main emphasis is on the organizational closure of that pattern. When Ilya Prigogine describes the structure of a living system as a dissipative structure, by contrast, his main emphasis is on the openness of that structure to the flow of
energy and matter. Thus a living system is both open and closed— it is structurally open, but organizationally closed. Matter continually flows through it, but the system maintains a stable form, and it does so autonomously through self-organization.
Figure 7-4
Vortex funnel of whirlpool in a bathtub.
To highlight that seemingly paradoxical coexistence of change and stability, Prigogine coined the term “dissipative structures.” As I’ve already mentioned, not all dissipative structures are living systems, and to visualize the coexistence of continual flow and structural stability, it is easier to turn to simple, nonliving dissipative structures. One of the simplest structures of this kind is a vortex in flowing water—for example, a whirlpool in a bathtub. Water continuously flows through the vortex, yet its characteristic shape, the well-known spirals and narrowing funnel, remains remarkably stable (figure 7-4). It is a dissipative structure.
Closer examination of the origin and progression of such a vortex reveals a series of rather complex phenomena. 11 Imagine a bathtub with shallow, motionless water. When the drain is opened, the water begins to run out, flowing radially toward the drain and speeding up as it approaches the hole under the accelerating force of gravity. Thus a smooth uniform flow is established. The flow does not remain in this smooth state for long, however.
Tiny irregularities in the water movement, movements of the air at the water’s surface, and irregularities in the drainpipe will cause a little more water to approach the drain on one side than on the other, and thus a whirling, rotary motion is introduced into the flow.
As the water particles are dragged down toward the drain, both their radial and rotational velocities increase. They speed up radially because of the accelerating force of gravity, and they pick up rotational speed as the radius of their rotation decreases, like a skater pulling in her arms during a pirouette. 12 As a result, the water particles move downward in spirals, forming a narrowing tube of flow lines, known as a vortex tube.
Because the basic flow is still radially inward, the vortex tube is continually squeezed by the water pressing against it from all sides. This pressure decreases its radius and intensifies the rotation further. Using Prigogine’s language, we can say that the rotation introduces an instability into the initial uniform flow. The force of gravity, the water pressure, and the constantly diminishing radius of the vortex tube all combine to accelerate the whirling motion to ever-increasing speeds.
However, this continuing acceleration ends not in catastrophe but in a new stable state. At a certain rotational speed, centrifugal forces come into play that push the water radially away from the drain. Thus the water surface above the drain develops a depression, which quickly turns into a funnel. Eventually a miniature tornado of air forms inside this funnel, creating highly complex and nonlinear structures—ripples, waves, and eddies—on the water surface inside the vortex.
In the end the force of gravity pulling the water down the drain, the water pressure pushing inward, and the centrifugal forces pushing outward balance each other and result in a stable state, in which gravity maintains the flow of energy at the larger scale, and friction dissipates some of it at smaller scales. The acting forces are now interlinked in self-balancing feedback loops that give great stability to the vortex structure as a whole.
Similar dissipative structures of great stability arise in thunder- , storms under special atmospheric conditions. Hurricanes and tor-
nadoes are vortices of violently rotating air, which can travel over large distances and unleash destructive forces without significant changes in their vortex structure. The detailed phenomena in these atmospheric vortices are much richer than those in the bathtub whirlpool, because several new factors come into play—temperature differences, expansions and contractions of air, moisture effects, condensations and evaporations, and so forth. The resulting structures are thus much more complex than the whirlpools in flowing water and display a greater variety of dynamic behaviors. Thunderstorms can turn into dissipative structures with characteristic sizes and shapes; under special conditions some of them can even split in two.
Metaphorically we can also visualize a cell as a whirlpool—that is, as a stable structure with matter and energy continually flowing through it. However, the forces and processes at work in a cell are quite different—and vastly more complex—than those in a vortex. While the balancing forces in the whirlpool are mechanical, the dominant force being gravity, those in the cell are chemical. More precisely they are the catalytic loops in the cell’s autopoietic network that act as self-balancing feedback loops.
Similarly, the origin of the whirlpool’s instability is mechanical, arising as a consequence of the first rotary motion. In a cell there are different kinds of instabilities, and their nature is chemical rather than mechanical. They too originate in the catalytic cycles that are a central feature of all metabolic processes. The crucial property of these cycles is their ability to act not only as selfbalancing but also as self-amplifying feedback loops, which may push the system farther and farther away from equilibrium until it reaches a threshold of stability. This point is called a “bifurcation point.” It is a point of instability at which new forms of order may emerge spontaneously, resulting in development and evolution.
Mathematically a bifurcation point represents a dramatic change of the system’s trajectory in phase space. 13 A new attractor may suddenly appear, so that the system’s behavior as a whole “bifurcates,” or branches off, in a new direction. Prigogine’s detailed studies of these bifurcation points have revealed some fasci-
nating properties of dissipative structures, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. 14
The dissipative structures formed by whirlpools or hurricanes can maintain their stability only as long as there is a steady flow of matter from the environment through the structure. Similarly, a living dissipative structure, such as an organism, needs a continual flow of air, water, and food from the environment through the system in order to stay alive and maintain its order. The vast network of metabolic processes keeps the system in a state far from equilibrium and, through its inherent feedback loops, gives rise to bifurcations and thus to development and evolution.
Cognition—the Process of Life
The three key criteria of life—pattern, structure, and process—are so closely intertwined that it is difficult to discuss them separately, although it is important to distinguish among them. Autopoiesis, the pattern of life, is a set of relationships among processes of production; and a dissipative structure can be understood only in terms of metabolic and developmental processes. The process dimension is thus implicit both in the pattern and in the structure criterion.
In the emerging theory of living systems the process of life—the continual embodiment of an autopoietic pattern of organization in a dissipative structure—is identified with cognition, the process of knowing. This implies a radically new concept of mind, which is perhaps the most revolutionary and most exciting aspect of this theory, as it promises finally to overcome the Cartesian division between mind and matter.
According to the theory of living systems, mind is not a thing but a process—the very process of life. In other words, the organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism—plant, animal, or human—with its environment are cognitive, or mental interactions. Thus life and cognition become inseparably connected. Mind—or, more accurately, mental process—is immanent in matter at all levels of life.
The new 7 concept of mind was developed independently by Gregory Bateson and Humberto Maturana during the 1960s. Bateson, who was a regular participant in the legendary Macy Conferences during the early years of cybernetics, pioneered the application of systems thinking and cybernetic principles in several areas. 15 In particular he developed a systems approach to mental illness and a cybernetic model of alcoholism, which led him to
define mental process as a systems phenomenon characteristic of living organisms.
Bateson listed a set of criteria that systems have to satisfy for mind to occur. 16 Any system that satisfies those criteria will be able to develop the processes we associate with mind—learning, memory, decision making, and so on. In Bateson’s view these mental processes are a necessary and inevitable consequence of a certain complexity that begins long before organisms develop brains and higher nervous systems. He also emphasized that mind is manifest not only in individual organisms, but also in social systems and ecosystems.
Bateson presented his new concept of mental process for the first time in 1969 in Hawaii, in a paper he gave at a conference on mental health. 17 This was the very year in which Maturana presented a different formulation of the same basic idea at the conference on cognition organized by Heinz von Foerster in Chicago. 18 Thus two scientists, both strongly influenced by cybernetics, had arrived simultaneously at the same revolutionary concept of mind. However, their methods were quite different, as were the languages in which they described their groundbreaking discovery.
Bateson’s whole thinking was in terms of patterns and relationships. His main aim, like Maturana’s, was to discover the pattern of organization common to all living creatures. “What pattern,” he asked, “connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you?” 19
Bateson thought that in order to describe nature accurately one should try to speak nature’s language, which, he insisted, is a language of relationships. Relationships are the essence of the living world, according to Bateson. Biological form consists of relationships, not of parts, and he emphasized that this is also how
people think. Therefore he called the book in which he discussed his concept of mental process Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity.
Bateson had a unique ability to glean insights from nature by intense observation. This was not just ordinary scientific observation. He was able, somehow, to observe a plant or animal with his whole being, with empathy and passion. And when he talked about it he would describe that plant in minute and loving detail, using what he considered to be the language of nature to talk about the general principles he derived from his direct contact with the plant. He was very taken by the beauty manifest in the complexity of nature’s patterned relationships, and the description of these patterns gave him a strong aesthetic pleasure.
Bateson developed his criteria of mental process intuitively from his keen observation of the living world. It was clear to him that the phenomenon of mind was inseparably connected with the phenomenon of life. When he looked at the living world, he saw its organizing activity as being essentially mental. In his own words, “mind is the essence of being alive.” 20
In spite of his clear recognition of the unity of mind and life— or mind and nature, as he would put it—Bateson never asked, What is life? He never felt the need to develop a theory, or even a model, of living systems that would provide a conceptual framework for his criteria of mental process. To develop such a framework was precisely Maturana’s approach.
By coincidence—or perhaps intuition?—Maturana struggled simultaneously with two questions that seemed to him to lead in opposite directions: What is the nature of life? and What is cognition? 21 Eventually he discovered that the answer to the first question—autopoiesis—provided him with the theoretical framework for answering the second. The result is a systems theory of cognition, developed by Maturana and Varela, which is sometimes called the Santiago theory.
The central insight of the Santiago theory is the same as Bateson’s—the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life. 22 This represents a radical expansion of the traditional concept of mind. According to the Santiago theory, the brain is not necessary for mind to exist. A bacterium, or a
plant, has no brain but has a mind. The simplest organisms are capable of perception and thus of cognition. They do not see, but they nevertheless perceive changes in their environment—differences between light and shadow, hot and cold, higher and lower concentrations of some chemical, and the like.
The new concept of cognition, the process of knowing, is thus much broader than that of thinking. It involves perception, emotion, and action the entire process of life. In the human realm cognition also includes language, conceptual thinking, and all the other attributes of human consciousness. The general concept,
however, is much broader and does not necessarily involve thinking.
The Santiago theory provides, in my view, the first coherent scientific framework that really overcomes the Cartesian split. Mind and matter no longer appear to belong to two separate categories but are seen as representing merely different aspects, or dimensions, of the same phenomenon of life.
To illustrate the conceptual advance represented by this unified view of mind, matter, and life, let us turn to a question that has confused scientists and philosophers for over a hundred years: What is the relationship between the mind and the brain? Neuroscientists have known since the nineteenth century that brain structures and mental functions are intimately connected, but the exact relationship between mind and brain always remained a mystery. As recently as 1994 the editors of an anthology titled Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience stated frankly in their introduction: “Even though everybody agrees that mind has something to do with the brain, there is still no general agreement on the exact nature of this relationship.” 23
In the Santiago theory the relationship between mind and brain is simple and clear. Descartes’s characterization of mind as “the thinking thing” (res cogitans) is finally abandoned. Mind is not a thing but a process—the process of cognition, which is identified with the process of life. The brain is a specific structure through which this process operates. The relationship between mind and brain, therefore, is one between process and structure.
The brain is, of course, not the only structure through which
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the process of cognition operates. The entire dissipative structure of the organism participates in the process of cognition, whether or not the organism has a brain and a higher nervous system. Moreover, recent research indicates strongly that in the human organism the nervous system, the immune system, and the endocrine system, which traditionally have been viewed as three separate systems, in fact form a single cognitive network . 24
The new synthesis of mind, matter, and life, which will be explored in great detail in the following pages, involves two conceptual unifications. The interdependence of pattern and structure allows us to integrate two approaches to the understanding of nature that have been separate and in competition throughout Western science and philosophy. The interdependence of process and structure allows us to heal the split between mind and matter that has haunted our modern era ever since Descartes. Together these two unifications provide the three interdependent conceptual dimensions for the new scientific understanding of life.
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